With Kurt Adams CEO IPC Systems

Kurt, you have more than two decades of leadership experience in the fintech sector. How do you view the current state of financial infrastructure, and what excites you about the future of this space?

As someone who witnessed firsthand the evolution of Wall Street and the fintech/payments world, I see a powerful parallel between the current financial infrastructure and where the payments industry stood 20 years ago. Back then, true interoperability and collaboration were transformative, and we’re now on the brink of a similar shift in trading platforms. Just as payments evolved to break down barriers and create greater efficiency, I’m excited about the potential to drive a similar transformation in trading technology from my seat at IPC.

Today, we are seeing a convergence of cloud computing, AI, and next-generation communication tools—technologies that have the power to reshape the financial ecosystem. The opportunity to lead that change, especially in the area of trading infrastructure, is incredibly exciting. At IPC, we’re poised at a unique inflection point. We’re not just adapting to the changing landscape—we’re actively helping to shape it. This is the future of finance, and the role IPC plays in this transformation is pivotal.

IPC provides a comprehensive suite of solutions that are integral to the operations of FX trading firms. But beyond that, how do these solutions evolve to meet future client needs, especially as the FX market continues to decentralize?

IPC is committed to future-proofing the solutions we provide for FX trading firms. Our flagship Connexus Cloud infrastructure, for instance, isn’t just a tool to connect firms; it’s a secure, scalable environment that continues to evolve to meet the growing demand for decentralised market access and high-performance trading. This is critical as clients increasingly expect speed, compliance, and intelligence from their platforms.

The Connexus Unigy platform, integrating voice trading with AI-powered transcription and analytics, is designed not just for today’s market, but to accommodate future shifts as trading strategies and client expectations continue to evolve. As the FX market becomes more decentralised, the ability to access liquidity quickly and efficiently—without compromising security—is going to be essential. IPC’s ongoing investment in evolving our platforms ensures that we are not just meeting the current needs of the market, but anticipating the next wave of client demands.

IPC’s network connects a huge number of financial institutions to liquidity venues, clearing systems, and counterparties. What is the nature of that community and how diverse is it?

IPC’s network is one of the most extensive in the financial industry, connecting a vast and diverse ecosystem of market participants. This includes sell-side and buy-side firms, investment banks, hedge funds, asset managers, interdealer brokers, market makers and trading platforms.

By fostering a highly interconnected community, IPC enables efficient trade execution and seamless access to global liquidity venues. Our infrastructure supports a mix of traditional financial institutions and newer fintech entrants, creating a dynamic trading environment that benefits from enhanced market connectivity. Whether facilitating direct market access, interbank trading, or regulatory reporting, IPC’s ecosystem ensures that financial firms of all sizes can operate efficiently and competitively.

In what key ways does IPC’s global network and co-location services help to enhance liquidity access and trading efficiency for FX trading firms?

The structure of the FX market, with its decentralised and fragmented nature, makes liquidity access and trading efficiency critical priorities for firms. IPC’s global network is specifically designed to address these challenges by reducing latency and providing direct connectivity to major liquidity hubs such as New York, London, Tokyo, and Singapore. By leveraging proximity hosting and co-location services, IPC helps trading firms minimise the physical distance between their infrastructure and liquidity providers, which is essential for ultra-low latency trading.

Furthermore, IPC’s hybrid connectivity model integrates private network solutions with public cloud capabilities, allowing firms to harness the benefits of cloud computing while maintaining deterministic, high-performance execution. 

Additionally, AI-driven analytics enhance trade execution by optimising order routing and risk management. These capabilities ensure that IPC is a trusted partner for FX firms looking to enhance trading efficiency and liquidity access in an increasingly competitive market.

The shift to cloud-based services is accelerating across markets. How do you see this trend continuing to reshape the landscape for FX firms in the years ahead?

The demand for cloud computing in FX trading has been steadily rising, driven by the need for scalability, flexibility, and cost efficiency. But the real transformation is happening now: as markets decentralise, clients are demanding faster, smarter, and more secure access to liquidity and market data. At IPC, we see this as an opportunity to go beyond traditional cloud offerings and lead in building cloud infrastructures that integrate seamlessly with AI, data analytics, and other advanced technologies.

With our hybrid cloud solutions, we’re not just meeting today’s needs but are actively preparing for the evolving demands of the market. As the FX landscape continues to decentralise, we believe cloud adoption will become even more vital, particularly for firms that need to balance low-latency performance with the ability to leverage cloud-based analytics. We’re investing heavily to ensure our clients can operate efficiently in this new, more dynamic market environment.

Millions of voice quotes are generated every day over IPC’s communications platform. What work have you been doing to drive further innovation in the voice trading space, for example by unlocking this market data and digitising voice communications to provide valuable insights?

IPC has been a pioneer in the digitalisation of voice trading, a critical yet often overlooked component of FX and other financial markets. While there has been a proliferation in electronic trading, voice trading still plays a significant role in markets, particularly for certain asset classes and complex transactions that require negotiation and nuance. But the world is changing, and the increasing integration of GenAI technologies is accelerating this shift. We see a future where voice won’t just be a mode for executing trades, but could become the dominant interface for everything in institutional trading—from client engagement to internal communications and decision-making. At IPC, we’re not only digitising voice; we’re preparing for this future.

Voice communications are increasingly being enhanced by artificial intelligence, including natural language processing (NLP) and sentiment analysis. These technologies will enable voice data to be processed in real-time, making it a much more valuable source of actionable insights. In essence, voice data will no longer just be a record of a conversation—it will become a critical piece of the broader market intelligence puzzle.

Historically, voice trading has been a crucial part of the market for complex negotiations, where relationships matter. Even in an increasingly electronic world, there’s still a need for that ‘human touch.’ But with the continued rise of AI and machine learning, we foresee a shift where voice is integrated into automated workflows, where conversations are transcribed, analyzed, and used to influence trading decisions, compliance reports, and market strategies.

At the same time, as voice trades work their way through transaction lifecycle processes—whether that’s for compliance reporting or client transaction review—automated systems will ensure that everything is captured, documented, and auditable. Capturing voice data electronically to process it through this increasingly complex web of systems and regulations is one of the largest challenges for financial firms. IPC’s voice trading solutions are evolving with this in mind, helping firms capture and extract more from every voice interaction.

By integrating AI with voice communications, IPC will continue to enhance not just voice trading, but also the way firms communicate and operate across the board. As voice remains a vital component of trading in FX and beyond, IPC is ensuring that our clients are prepared for a future where voice is an integral part of every interaction, both internally and with clients. This is not just about digitising voice for today’s market—it’s about enabling a future where voice is the primary interface in financial workflows, powered by AI and ready to integrate seamlessly with other trading and market data solutions.

How is AI helping to position IPC for the future of FX, particularly in terms of enhancing trade execution and market data analysis?

AI is transforming how financial institutions operate, and at IPC, we are on the cutting edge of this transformation. We are increasingly integrating AI-driven analytics and machine learning into our platforms, ensuring that our clients can optimise their trading strategies and improve risk management. By using AI-powered tools for sentiment analysis and natural language processing (NLP), we’re able to offer more actionable insights derived from voice data, which has traditionally been one of the most underutilised sources of market intelligence.

As AI becomes increasingly embedded into institutional workflows, it will help drive smarter, faster decision-making. This is especially important in FX markets, where timing and precision are everything. By continuing to push the boundaries of AI and machine learning in trading communications, IPC is positioning itself as not just a leader in infrastructure but as a key enabler of the next generation of financial trading.

IPC is extremely focused on delivering a customer-centric experience. What other factors help to differentiate you from other leading FX infrastructure providers?

Many claim it, few mean it!  IPC’s continuing success and growth over 50+ years in business has been built very much on a customer-first philosophy that prioritises reliability, flexibility, security and continuous innovation. Unlike many service providers that offer rigid, one-size-fits-all solutions, and high cost, long-commitment service agreements, IPC designs all of its services to be scalable and easily integrable into existing trading environments.

Another key service differentiator is our API-first strategy, which enables seamless integration with other services and applications. This approach allows clients to customise their trading workflows, improve automation and enhance overall efficiency.

To illustrate this, our flagship voice trading solution, OneView Portfolio, was developed precisely to satisfy growing market expectation for greater integration with, and interoperability between, multiple enterprise and third-party applications and processes. 

Built in alignment with IPC’s Open Platform-and-API-first philosophy, OneView brings together the fragmented and often disconnected workflows that run in and across different applications and platforms. It also enables seamless integration with Here (formally OpenFin)enabled desktops. 

From a user perspective, it unifies everything that needs to be ‘attached’ to a voice trade within a single touch, single view environment. Importantly, it doesn’t require any changes in ‘user behaviour’; we didn’t want our user base to have to learn a whole new way of doing things. Rather, we see it as the consolidation of a number of things we were already doing, packaged within a more efficient and integrated solution.

Additionally, IPC’s commitment to collaboration and strategic partnerships also sets us apart. By working with leading market data providers, cloud platforms and fintech innovators, IPC ensures that our extensive network of customers have access to the latest technology without having to manage complex integrations themselves. It’s a 1+1 = 3 scenario – rather than continuous ‘wheel-reinvention.’ We look to partnerships, collaboration and co-opetition to support our users, connecting disparate moving parts in more efficient ways to make things better, smarter and faster.

Ultimately, IPC’s blend of cutting-edge technology and customer-centric innovation will be a critical driver in solidifying its position as a market leader in trading communications and connectivity infrastructure and services.